Our team is driven by curiosity, collaboration and creativity. We’re a globally distributed team, which lets us bring a wide perspective to any project and keeps our music playlists well fed. We’re committed to designing solutions that work. So we’re constantly learning new skills, experimenting with old techniques, and pushing our boundaries.

Michu Benaim S., CEO / Partner

Michu leads the studio and In-House’s awesome team by setting creative and business strategy. She wears many hats to feed her curiosity, and makes things–mostly with people, always through stories. Over the years, she’s founded culturemagazines (three to date), a civic app, worked as a journalist, sat on afewboards and adopted an infinity of ‘indoor-kid‘ hobbies. Asking questions and collaborating are both at the core of her design practice. She has a B.A. in philosophy and comparative literature from UNC Chapel Hill and an M.B.A. from the McCombs School of Business in the University of Texas at Austin. She frequently speaks about art and creativity, being female in business, entrepreneurship, leadership, and other ships.

Three fun facts:

Michu appeared in a few television commercials as a kid to get out of going to school. She also kindly asks that you don’t search for them.

As a teenager, she received a national award for poetry in her native Venezuela.

And she’d be happy to tell you a third in person.

Alexander Wright, Partner

Alex is In-House’s resident partner-in-crime. In the span of his design career, he’s been an art director for two high-profile Latin American publications Plátanoverde and Medio Informativo, and a senior designer for Gopher Illustrated. He’s also a founder and longtime art director for the Simpl3 audio-visual collective, where he produced, designed, planned and played hundreds of events. His work has been featured in books, magazines and exhibitions throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe.

Three fun facts:

Alex is an ex-skater.

Alex is an ex-DJ.

Alex is a father of two.

Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz, Project Lead

Lope’s our kickass lead for nonprofit projects. He works with clients representing organizations from all over the world, and leads our design team to make sure projects are always amazing, on-time and on-spec. Lope’s the co-founder of multiple arts magazines with global distribution, and he’s a fellow for many prestigious organizations, including TED Conferences, the JSK Knight Fellowship at Stanford and Next City / Vanguard.

Three fun facts:

Lope collects small design-related tchotchkes from all over the world. Examples: a can of Majorelle blue paint from Marrakech, a 1960’s Coronet brandy ad by Paul Rand, a santería soap-box from Mexico, a print by Michael Cina, etc.

He’s the worst instagrammer he knows. (He takes millions of photos but forgets to post them, so any Lope-related instagram update comes with a #tbt.)

Lope is always enrolled in a class of some sort. Lately, he’s been learning to work with Arduino.

Rafael Ramirez, Lead Developer

Rafa is our code poet. He helps develop web applications and manage developers across all of our digital projects. He started slinging code when ‘the web was all tables’ and hasn’t stopped since.

Three fun facts:

He’s a sports nerd.

He’s a cinephile.

He’s a hobby photographer.

Carlos Castro Lugo, Designer

Carlos is one of our brilliant designers. He specializes in editorial design, but dabbles in illustration work, brush pen calligraphy, branding and—sometimes—motion graphics. Carlos graduated with a Master’s in Design from La Universidad de Palermo, and has since worked at various advertising agencies in Venezuela. He also has experience in design management and design research, including the production of objects, spaces and images (and exploring how cultural hybridization and re-semantization is a neo-esoteric consumption model in the design shops of Palermo in the City of Buenos Aires, but that’s neither here nor there).

Three fun facts:

Carlos is an anime lover.

Carlos loves Beyoncé—hail the queen!

Carlos loves to play video games.

Alan Gomes, Front-End Developer

Alan brings sketches and photoshop files to life, among other crucial UX/UI tasks. With more than 15 years of experience in coding, Alan is continuing expanding his tool stack and skill set. (His gif game on Slack is unmatched, too.)